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A post mortem
I was somewhat prepared given we had occultist instead of GR so we could stall and heal eventually, however that then took away his offensive role which put all the pressure immensely on HWYman and MAA to perform. Early on, it was ok, avoiding fights, tanking stress and negative affinity options, since PD mostly helped to sustain the group and assist w clean up, whereas the rest did the damage, with some stalling to allow occultist to slowly heal away, it was ok. The more sustained fights were more gambles betting that occultist could heal. But consistency is not his forte. Thus requiring the switch for MAA to utilise crush to heal off combo tokens instead of using them for stunning enemies. This change was good since the healing was important and ability to shake off some annoying enemy tokens whilst sustaining to allow HWYman more time to demolish all enemies.
HWYman picking up thanatophobia was devastating and not picking up enough flares was also tricky, as conscripts kept dying.

The biggest blow also came when occultist was killed as well. I was talking to my friend whilst playing there due to the long nature of the stream, but regardless I made unnecessary risky plays and lost him that way.
Then another blunder, I still thought that if we roll well w veteran flares, the final boss fight would still be possible given some healing off arbalists if they spawn and HWYman just smashing damage. But the fight requires a lot of sustain due to the healing from the final boss.
Yet the 3rd blunder was in thinking the final boss would allow flares to be used. Flares can't be used in lairs, I didnt think the same applied here and so that was a nasty surprise

Also I triggered the final cutscene too early by mistake and didnt have time to organise my trinkets appropriately as well. So the loss was almost guaranteed, there is just too much damage w incoming to survive through. If I had more herbs to increase healing or even if defender could be spammed to keep protecting HWYman and eventually heal a little w crush, then its possible, but otherwise its too difficult

Without occultists abilitiy to remove crit tokens, without changing HWYmans skills to allow for highway robbery to get rid of dodge and crit tokens (the dodge tokens being important as MAA missing crush on a combo token'd enemy, doesnt allow for the heal effect to trigger. The crit tokens being removed/stolen is obvious as well.

Also without proper removal of DOT's, there is just far too much damage incoming via DOTs, that either need a lot of healing to burn through the DOT, or DOT removal like w PD (when a 13 dmg DOT is stacked, having on 3 uses of Battlefield medicine allows for far greater sustain then you would think.

There was also a battle with the librarian, probably a bad idea to engage when we are about to lose the stagecoach trophy but its a very easy boss if you are prepared w 3rd, 4th rank penetration, are fine w some dodge tokens and blindness. In my case, honestly our back rank penetration was ok but w some shuffling of books, we manage.

I also got rid of some good trinkets, like for example, I should have kept the boots that give dodge when moving since HWYman had greater than 6 speed and then the trinket that converts dodge into dodge+ tokens. The things I kept and threw was also haphazardly done, keeping items for the final boss so early is just far too difficult without upgrading the stagecoach, but even then due to the quests its not ideal either.

Some close shaves w the veterans holding off escalation 3 sieges on inns, but w some very conservative play and a healthy amount of luck, it felt mostly consistent.

Overall, a lot of mistakes, a metric tonne actually, but a lot of good learning.
Onto max custom difficulty and 4 heroes only for real this time!

~Streamed 24/3/25 -- Watch live at https://www.twitch.tv/jayedmos